Giving to the 100 Top Charities Is Up 11%

An 11% jump in giving to the top charities shows a widening gap with other groups, but uncertainty looms even for them.

Student performers from the University of Arkansas Spirit Squads take the stage at an event Recognizing the University’s most generous supporters. Whit Pruitt/University of Arkansas

November 5, 2019 | Read Time: 5 minutes

Last year, donations to the nation’s largest nonprofits grew 11.3 percent, outpacing giving to the charitable world as a whole by a considerable margin. But fundraisers wonder whether these gains can continue, whether potential threats to the economy and political uncertainty could depress future giving. (Subscribers: See the full article more results, data, and analysis.)

The cash and stock gifts raised by the 100 organizations on America’s Favorite Charities, our annual ranking of the nonprofits that raise the most in cash support, represents about 8.7 percent of all giving last year, as tracked by the annual “Giving USA” report. That’s a striking figure given that they’re only a small fraction of the more than 1.5 million registered nonprofits.

Use our interactive database to see a breakdown of the cash support, revenue, noncash gifts, and more — including historical fundraising trends — for each of the 100 top nonprofits.
The strong showing by the nation’s biggest groups underscores the growing gap between big charities and all others. These largest nonprofits — many of which rely heavily on the ultrawealthy — are raising money in a very different fundraising landscape than smaller groups. When the 2018 “Giving USA” estimate of overall contributions was adjusted for inflation, the verdict was an unusual 1.7 percent drop — just the 13th decline in overall giving in the past four decades.

“Since the last recession, the wealthy keep getting wealthier,” says Josh Birkholz, CEO of the fundraising consultancy Bentz Whaley Flessner, whose clients include many groups on this list. “The organizations whose business models are tuned towards high-net-worth philanthropy are the ones that are doing the best.”

But even these largest groups that raise millions and even billions in gifts have formidable competition in the race for contributions: commercial donor-advised funds. Just four years ago, Fidelity Charitable brought in more money than United Way Worldwide for the first time. But what was then a small gap between the two organizations has become a chasm.

Fidelity Charitable took in more than $9 billion last year, nearly triple the $3 billion United Way Worldwide raised. In fact, the donor-advised-fund giant brought in more contributions in 2018 than the top five nonprofits on the America’s Favorite Charities list combined. (America’s Favorite Charities counts only money given to nonprofits devoted to a cause. Donor-advised funds are just a giving vehicle, so in calculating cash support, we excluded gifts to DAFs, even for community foundations.)

Gifts to the top 10 organizations in our ranking are up more than 17 percent, but as with the other 90 groups, that growth is uneven. Two of those top 10 nonprofits saw giving decline, while the rest saw an increase.

Donations to the American Red Cross (No. 6) shot up by nearly 158 percent as donors gave generously to aid the victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, which struck during the group’s 2018 fiscal year.

“When large, visible disasters happen, the American public continues to step up with generosity,” says Don Herring, the Red Cross’s chief development officer. That largess continued with the devastating California wildfires later in 2018.

While United Way Worldwide held on to the top spot in our rankings, the charity took in 6.8 percent less in cash support than it did in 2017. That continues a downward trend over many years for the organization as a whole, largely due to declines in workplace giving campaigns.

More and more charities are turning to the very wealthy to make up for a drop in middle-class giving.
One reason the biggest nonprofits are doing so well is that they have focused their efforts on the top donors — those who have gained the most as wealth inequality has grown. In recent years, big donors have made up for large losses in giving from middle-class people, whose household income has been mostly flat, leaving them with less discretionary income. While higher education and health-care organizations have long focused on winning big gifts, groups such as the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (No. 10) that are devoted to other causes are also increasingly turning to the ultrawealthy to meet their bottom-line goals.

One reason that the very wealthy are still good prospects is that they are less likely to face the loss of charitable deductions as an incentive to give because of the tax law enacted at the end of 2017. Though the figures in our current rankings are the first to reflect the impact of the new tax law, nonprofits are still not sure how much difference it made. The most significant change came from the drop in the number of people who itemized and therefore had access to the deduction. Last year the share of individuals who claimed charitable deductions on their taxes fell to 8.5 percent, compared with 24 percent in 2017.

Some organizations, like the United Way, that raise money from middle- and upper-middle-class donors say they’re feeling the bite of the policy change while others believe the impact has been modest and hard to measure. Still others say they jury is still out. They say they haven’t seen an impact yet — and plan to wait and see.

Heading into the last months of the year, fundraisers will be working hard to figure out how to keep donors giving at a steady clip. A lot could depend on the stock market, which took a nosedive at the tail end of 2018. Nonprofits will be watching closely, says Phil Hills, CEO of fundraising-consulting firm Marts & Lundy.

“Where it ends in ’19 could have a big impact on giving.”